


The (Late) Late Show With Richie Tozier

by strictlyamess



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, read that last one again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 17:03:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14359785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strictlyamess/pseuds/strictlyamess
Summary: Repressing your own feelings is an integral part of being a television comedian in the year 2016, when everything has gone to shit and old monsters are resurfacing.Richie Tozier, host of the Late Late Show on CBS, is nothing if not excellent at his job.





	The (Late) Late Show With Richie Tozier

**Author's Note:**

> hey, folks, here we are again, back with your semi-regular angst.
> 
> with the recent casting news, I've been thinking a lot about how shit's going to go down for the Losers in 2016 (the projected year in which Chapter 2 will be set), so...I wrote down my thoughts. here's my take.
> 
> please know - this is 100% canon compliant. you KNOW what that means, you understand what comes with that. read at your own risk.

Late-night comedy wasn’t for the faint of heart.

Everyone, from the anchors on upstanding news stations like CNN to the trolls on the 4chan message boards, had all but given up on the world at this point. Trump was running for office and making significant headway, everything had gone to shit, and the general population would just as soon bury their heads in the sand about the truth than make progress towards improving the situation.

That was fine by Richie Tozier. In fact, it played right into his hands.

He and the rest of television’s late-night hosts had, over the years, become the primary purveyors of the news, because people were increasingly desperate to find something to laugh at in the face of the imminent apocalypse. Richie was particularly good (read: well practiced) at spinning existential terror into laughs, and so his rise to stardom was not unexpected by any means. He’d always kind of known that his defense by way of comedy could and would get him somewhere, or at the very least bail him out of tricky situations. (In fact, he was pretty sure that his thirteen year old self had accomplished something pretty major through crudeness and feelings avoidance. It didn’t bother him too much that he didn’t remember what that accomplishment was; he’d raved enough through the 90’s to have a palpable excuse for memory loss.)

Still, Richie knew that he was an exception, not a rule. Most people who stared hard enough into the lens of the world and tried to laugh at it came back horrified instead. Crew members came and went on his show all the time. They couldn’t handle the constant barrage of bad news, or the repackaging of terrifying thoughts into quick, swallowable jokes.

Given that Richie was tough enough to play Atlas for a living, he reasoned that he should also, theoretically, be tough enough to deal with the emotional aftermath of the phone call he’d just recieved. 

There was probably something funny about suddenly remembering pieces of your childhood in vivid clarity, right? There was definitely at least some kind of hot take about the resurgence of whatever crazy dark shit Mike Hanlon was talking about. A joke about small-town Maine, maybe. The punchline would have to do with Stephen King.

His childhood wasn’t anything to be afraid of, anyway. He spent most of the the six-hour crap flight from LAX to Logan that he’d managed to book on short notice mulling it over, and he’d come up empty. His parents were average Joes, and his former bullying situation was shitty, but not unusual. He _still_ got in trouble for running his mouth, so it fit that his occasional inability to think before speaking would have been the thing he got his ass kicked for in his youth.

Mike’s Dark Thing was probably pretty scary (judging by Mike’s tone of voice and the way that his own stomach had twisted upon hearing that it was back), but he still couldn’t get a good enough grip on what that was or why it mattered to understand exactly what was terrifying about it, so it was better not to expend energy on it just yet.

No, there was something else that was making Richie want to jump the plane. Something (someone?) in those early years had fucked him up pretty badly. He couldn’t remember who, what, or how, just that he hadn’t been experienced enough at the time to twist it for laughs, and so had ended up with his heart in little tiny pieces. Heart-wrenching sadness wasn’t a feeling that he thought he’d ever explored, but somehow one quick phone call had kicked his emotions into gear in a way that the glitz and glamour of television life never had. If a single short conversation was going to leave him reeling like this, he had a nasty feeling that as soon as he crossed into the town limits of Derry, Maine, he was going to be knocked on his ass by a tsunami of feelings that would send him running for the hills, much to the disappointment of Mike Hanlon and the rest.

A full-body shiver wracked his body at the thought of _the rest_ , nameless, faceless figures that he’d have to interact with soon, and he weakly stuck out a hand to flag down his flight attendant. He’d taken more Valium before boarding than was strictly healthy, but it wasn’t enough. He needed a drink.

The person across the aisle in business-class eyed him with recognition and worry, and he cracked a smile. Yes, he was Richie Tozier, former (as far as the press knew, anyway) drug user, and having a drink at this altitude might just kill him, thanks very much for your concern. He hoped it would, honestly. It was probably a better fate than whatever (whoever) was waiting for him in Derry.

He waited patiently through the remaining three hours of the flight, but unfortunately, death didn’t come for him. He had a headache, instead, which was somehow worse. It didn’t matter too much, though; he had a pretty immediate second shot at ending things, given that he still had to traverse I-95, and he hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car in almost three years. (Thank God for Uber and chauffeurs.) He was far from sober enough to drive, and his reputation was on thin ice as it was - a DUI certainly wouldn’t help viewership - but this trip was probably going to kill him anyway, so who cared, really? He wasn’t bothered. (He was never bothered.) He waited in the mercifully short Enterprise line, got keys to a rental car, and zipped out into the evening.

He’d been right about the tsunami of feelings, kind of. As he drove up the coast, swerving lazily from lane to lane, his brain started to kick into high gear, to the point where it felt like he regained another memory with every passing town. Between that and the fact that he was sobering up, it was probable that his cause of death was going to be ‘cranial combustion’ rather than ‘car accident’. The sound of ‘cranial combustion’ was far less appealing than ‘car accident’, he thought, so he kept zigzagging, willing the Massholes around him to slip up and ram into the back of his rented Toyota Camry.

Everyone on the road was being bizarrely conscientious, so Richie was left with no other choice but to sit with Kesha singing on the tinny radio (which had been turned down for the sake of his headache) and his memories.

Bill’s name came back into his head first. Of course it did. As soon as his brain lit on red hair and grim, determined eyes, it was hard to imagine ever having forgotten Bill at all. He’d spent hours, days, maybe years in the thick, tangled vines of the Barrens with that kid, playing army and pretending that they were tough enough to grow up and deal with the world they were inheriting.

Bill had been a solid place for all of them - the leader of their squadron of kids. Although it had been Mike left to keep watch at the post, it would be Bill, when they got there, that would command the troops.

There was a joke or an astute observation in there somewhere about _playing_ army versus _being_ army, but Richie was too overstimulated to word it coherently. Besides, it was enough, sometimes, to just acknowledge the clever thing quietly and move on.

He hadn’t had that kind of understanding when he was 13. The only one of them that had had any adult sensibilities at that point was Stanley Uris.

And there it was, the second remembrance. Stan the Man. A wave of sharp sadness rose in Richie’s chest at the thought of having forgotten Stan for all those years, but he pushed it down, electing to focus on things he could joke with Stan about when they reconciled. Stan had always pretended to be annoyed by Richie’s gags and gross comments, but Richie knew better than to think that Stan’s sharp attitude was genuine. He’d dressed like a miniature businessman not because he was already an adult, but rather because he wanted so desperately to be one. 

Richie wondered vaguely if Stan was happy now that his wish had come true.

Remembering Stan made Richie slow his speed a little bit and get back into the traveling lane. He could take an ibuprofen at whatever restaurant Mike had suggested they meet at and get over his headache...and after they’d all connected, he could even leave, monster-free and existing outside of any emotional trauma. 

First, though, he could visit with everyone. He owed them that, for forgetting.

He owed _Stan_ that.

And honestly, it would be genuinely nice to see the old gang for a night. They’d been apart for long enough that there was no real way that the conversation could awkwardly fizzle out. They’d all have plenty of stories to share; enough, even, that the messiness of the past might not be brought up at all. (Richie knew that there were still a few people he was forgetting, and the gut-punch of heartbreak he’d experienced when he’d heard Mike’s voice was still fresh in his nervous system. He’d have to keep his guard up at least a little.)

Entering the state of Maine brought him memories of one Miss Beverly Marsh, much to his delight. He’d made a point to meet the acquaintance of a great many women, but there was no girl who made quite as good a guy as Bevvy. His mind gave him flashes of trips to Portland and weed-smoke nights, and he chuckled lowly under his breath, wincing as the vibrations from his laugh echoed around his aching skull. Bev would get a kick out of his rolling in to the party with a hangover. It was nice to be able to bank on at least one laugh.

Was it Bill that had been in love with her? No, there was someone else.

His name came to Richie as soon as he saw the hauntingly familiar red sign: _You Are Now Entering The Town of Derry, Maine_.

“Ben Hanscom,” Richie whispered, letting the thought distract him from the chills he had upon seeing the paint peeling on the old sign, and how the windy road was worsening his already splitting headache. “Haystack.”

He and Ben had been in the same English classes their first two years of high school. They’d written to Bev in the time that they were supposed to be writing essays on _Heart of Darkness_...but Bev’s responses had slowed and eventually stopped like Marlowe’s boat in the jungle, and they were left with _the horror, the horror_ of being forgotten.

Richie had promised himself that day that he’d try not to forget, hadn’t he? He’d made a vow with Haystack in the boys’ bathroom on the second floor. Shit.

There was probably a joke in that, too, but Richie wasn’t feeling like it was a very funny one.

Why _hadn’t_ he wanted to forget? Derry was a pretty average little suburb, all in all, apart from that one monster that he still couldn’t fucking visualize for whatever reason. What could it have given teenage Richie Tozier that he would have wanted to hang on to?

Driving into downtown Derry was absolutely bizarre. It was everything and nothing like he remembered: the streets were the same but the businesses were not, the Aladdin was gone but the pharmacy remained, and the only building that looked even remotely the same as it had in the 80’s was the Townhouse. While that was gross in that their lack of renovation would probably be reflected in the quality of the rooms, in the moment, Richie was grateful for it. It meant that he didn’t have to fumble with his phone’s Maps app.

His check-in was mercifully swift. (There were only twelve rooms in the whole damn place, so if it hadn’t been quick, Richie would have had a meltdown.) He was on the second floor, and as soon as he was handed his key, he hustled up the steps, already digging through his bag for a bottle of Ibuprofen. His first stop in the room was the bathroom, to wash down his pills with some water. He took three times the suggested dosage, hoping that additional chemicals would douse the fire in his head faster.

Once he’d gotten the pills down, he took a look around the room. It was less decrepit than he thought it might be, but that wasn’t saying much. The paint on the floor molding was chipped and nothing had been dusted since Richie had last visited Derry, probably, but the bedsheets looked sleepably clean and there were no mold spots on the ceiling, so he’d survive. It was hardly the five-star celebrity treatment he was accustomed to, but for Derry Maine, it was enough.

Sighing, he sank down onto the bed, massaging his temples. He had thirty minutes until they were all meeting at the Chinese restaurant Mike had suggested. That was thirty minutes too long to be sitting with his own mind. He didn’t want to remember anything else - not yet.

After checking through his social media apps (Calvin Harris had followed him on Twitter and Instagram, but otherwise no news of note), he looked at himself in the smudged mirror, cataloguing his appearance for the first time since he’d gotten Mike’s call. Surprisingly, he didn’t look like _complete_ shit, even after flying and driving for most of the day. His hair wasn’t as long as it had been in high school, but it was still the feature he was most vain about, and for good reason. Even now, at around 40, it was still growing in thick and strong. There was a little gray around his temples, but according to the comments on a recent Instagram post he’d made, that particular display of age “added character”, so he was in no rush to dye it. He’d gotten contacts, too, and his shorter haircut paired with his lack of glasses made him look far more sophisticated than he had in his first two decades of life...or at least, he thought so, anyway. It would be up to his old friends to determine whether or not that was true.

His skin was a little mottled, there were fresh crows’ feet around his eyes, and he had a little stubble on his jaw, but he could live with that. The stubble, at least, was kind of sexy.

He decided not to change for dinner. He’d flown in a Valentino suit, he’d driven in a Valentino suit, and, so help him God, he would impress his friends at the restaurant in a Valentino suit. They wouldn’t care if it was wrinkled. It was high-fashion, and given his eclectic wardrobe in his teens, he was liable to blow their minds with it. 

One of them in particular would give him a hard time about it, probably. Maybe Beverly? Or the one he hadn’t remembered yet. There were seven of them, right? Seven was a lucky, cosmic number, after all. Seven felt like it was the truth, but he’d only remembered five so far, not counting himself…

He’d blown fifteen minutes on his reflection at that point, and it would probably take him another fifteen minutes to get Apple Maps to send him to the right restaurant, so with an amount of effort, he hoisted himself off of the bed and began walking towards the door. His headache was starting to get a little better, but now he was nauseous. He really needed to get something in his system before he puked the Ibuprofen back up.

Apple Maps took him to not one, but two wrong destinations before he finally reached the appropriate restaurant. He checked Mike’s text one more time to make sure he was truly in the right place, took a deep, grounding breath (just like his therapist recommended he do; she was going to be so pleased when he told her he was employing her strategies), and opened the car door.

The first person he saw upon entering the restaurant was Mike, and Mike looked...terrible.

“We left heroin-chic in the 90’s, Mikey, haven’t you heard?” he said before he could stop himself, eyeing Mike’s whitening hair and hollow cheeks with great concern.

“Beep beep, Richie,” Mike responded, brushing off the offending comment and smiling a thin, soft smile. Richie’s Grinch heart immediately grew three sizes.

He was _home_.

“It’s 2016 now, baby! Beep beep is out of style!” Richie took long, excited steps towards his friend, unable to keep an idiotic smile off of his face. “You can just tell me to shut the fuck up, it’s fine, it’s _en vogue…_.”

“Shut the fuck up, then,” Mike laughed, walking forward to meet Richie in the middle. They embraced, and Richie felt a wave of warm, sweet memories slide over him like a blanket: Mike’s farm in the summertime, riding bikes along the main street and screaming obscenities at anyone who looked at any of them funny, showing Mike how to play Street Fighter down at the arcade and then immediately cursing having done that as Mike picked it up and began consistently beating him at it.

He had missed the shit out of Mike Hanlon, hadn’t he?

“You’re a little late,” Mike said fondly as he stepped backwards out of the embrace. “We thought you might be.”

“I got lost,” Richie admitted, looking past Mike. “Who’s my welcoming party?”

A thin, solemn man was leaning next to a doorway in the back. His red hair was thinning a little bit, but his sharp blue eyes were unmistakable.

“Big Bill,” Richie whispered with an amount of awe. The strength and nobility that Bill had exuded back in the 80’s had not faded with time, but rather increased, and Richie was drawn immediately into his orbit. He remembered thinking he would die for Bill, back in the day, and as his eyes met Bill’s now, he realized that he hadn’t quite closed the door on that possibility.

“Hey, idiot,” Bill said warmly. “Nice of you to join us at last.”

“Fashionably late,” Richie replied, tugging at the lapels of his suit. “Emphasis on the fashion.”

“Yeah, yeah, very impressive. Come on.” Bill opened the door he was proximal to, and stepped into the next room. Mike followed him in immediately, and gestured for Richie to do the same.

Looking at that door made Richie’s insides feel like they had turned to ice.

Something crazy was about to happen. He knew it. He KNEW it.

Slowly, he followed after Mike, trying to swallow his nerves back down. He was cool, he was fine, he was Richie fucking Tozier, host of the Late Late Show on CBS. He couldn’t be fucked about his childhood. He was beyond all of that now.

“Richie!” A female voice called out for him before he’d fully entered the room. He barely had time to locate the figure running towards him before she was upon him; arms around his neck and face pressed into his shoulder. He wound his arms around her waist fondly, breathing in the chemical scent of her shampoo and perfume.

“Madame Marsh,” he said, putting on a thick, terrible French accent that he knew would make her laugh. “Eez a pleasure, no?”

“Charmed to see you, Rich,” she laughed, pulling back and examining his face delightedly. Richie was almost taken aback by her appearance. Her beauty was immense, but not in the Hollywood way that he was used to - no contour had shaped her cheekbones up, and no winged eyeliner had been employed to draw attention to her green, green eyes. There was something wholesome in it, and he drank it up for longer than was probably polite. 

“We missed you when you left,” he found himself saying, sounding all of fifteen.

She understood. The left corner of her mouth twitched up, and she laced her fingers together quietly. “Yeah, I know. I missed you guys, too. I just didn’t know that I did.”

“I know what you mean,” Richie said solemnly.

“Me, too.” A big, firm hand came out of seemingly nowhere to clap Richie on the shoulder. Richie turned, expecting to give another hug...and could not for the life of him figure out who the man in front of him was.

“Hey, uh, buddy…”

“It’s Ben Hanscom,” the man said, shrugging amiably. He gestured to his midsection. “New and improved.”

Richie couldn’t keep himself from laughing. He threw his head back and let out a long, relieved stream of giggles. “Oh, Haystack, but you’re missing some! Where’s the other half of you?”

“Permanently evicted,” Ben said proudly. “C’mere.”

Richie hugged Ben, marveling at the strength of the muscles in his arms and back, and looked at Mike from over Ben’s shoulder. “Mikey, where’s our Stan the Man Uris?”

“I’ve been asking him that all night,” said Bill, and suddenly Richie’s mind was inundated with different, quieter memories - of Stan at the quarry, watching Bill’s back as he jumped down off of the dive and into the water, of Bill in Richie’s living room, brushing the tips of his fingers over Stan’s hand for a bit too long when he distributed Monopoly money. Bill was married now, as far as Richie could assess from the ring he was wearing, but old memories had a way of eclipsing you, and Bill seemed to be very much in the throes of nostalgia at the moment. Richie couldn’t fault him. They all kind of were.

Some of the heartbroken buzz Richie had hoped wouldn’t resurface was starting to hum under his skin. He pulled back from Ben and quickly tried to make a joke to alleviate his uneasiness.

“Probably still ironing, right? No wrinkles for our Stan, not then, not ever.” Richie looked desperately back at Bill for affirmation. “Why aren’t you laughing? I’m hilarious.”

“Probably,” Bill repeated emptily, which did not help Richie’s discontented itchiness at all. Scowling, he turned back to Beverly, knowing that he’d have an audience there…

...and laid eyes instead on a man tucked away in the back corner of the room, who had apparently been watching Richie silently the whole time.

“Hey, Rich,” the man said quietly, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. His right hand was tangled in his shock of blonde-brown hair, tugging restlessly at a few strands (an old nervous tick, Richie remembered), and his left was tapping anxious patterns into the table. His big, brown eyes were a little bit glassy behind his glasses, as if he were on the verge of tears.

 _Eddie Kaspbrak_ , his brain supplied him. _Brave little Eddie Spaghetti_.

The prophesized tsunami of emotions finally crashed over Richie’s head, and it was all he could do not to pass out.

Eddie fucking Kaspbrak.

Oh, he had repressed so much shit, hadn’t he?

“Eds,” Richie managed, trying to control his voice well enough to sound like he wasn’t affected. “Still got all your hair, hm?”

“Don’t call me that.” The retort was achingly familiar, and it was kind of spurring on Richie’s increasingly intense nausea. “But yes, somehow.”

Richie’s agent had teased him time and time again about his high standards for dating. She was right, Richie knew. His expectations were impossible to meet. He was an expert on zeroing in on little flaws; most girls were either not smart enough, or not his type. (After he’d said that to his agent, she’d suggested he try dating men instead. He had declined. That wasn’t to say he was homophobic or even heterosexual; he had a niggling feeling that being attracted to men was well within the realm of possibilities for him, but he didn’t want to jeopardize anything. Sure, it was 2016, but he was a product of Reagan’s 80’s, and as such his mantra had always been ‘better safe than sorry’.) Sandy, the woman he’d lasted the longest with, had had a sharp tongue and pretty, fluffy brown hair that haloed her face when she woke up in the morning. When his agent had asked him why he’d broken up with her, he’d told her the truth: that sometimes, when he looked at her, he felt like something was wrong, and he didn’t know why.

He knew now. It was her eyes. There was nothing in them that reminded him of splashing at the quarry, or lazy Sundays reading comic books.

Still, for all he was feeling now, Richie couldn’t remember for the life of him what exactly had transpired between he and Eddie. He assumed it wasn’t good, given that even trying to think about it felt a little bit like trying to light a fire in his own chest, but not knowing specifics was going to kill him.

Against his better judgement, he strode over to the table, reaching it in three neat steps and sliding into the seat next to Eddie. Eddie shivered, pushed his glasses up his nose, and scooted a couple inches away from Richie, but when their eyes met, he didn’t look away.

“We gonna eat, then?” asked Ben, looking between Richie and Eddie with an amused expression. Beside him, Bev had her hand over her mouth. 

“What’re you freaked about, Princess Ringwald?” Richie asked, more than a little annoyed at the fact that his friends apparently remembered more about his past than he did. “Catch your reflection in a mirror?”

“Choke, asshole,” she responded, yanking her hand off of her face and using it to flip him off.

“There’s our girl,” Richie cooed. “Derry’s very own Ginger Spice.”

“We should eat, I think,” Mike cut in, obviously trying to keep the conversation from escalating. “It’ll be dark soon.”

“We should wait for Stan,” Bill countered, eyes still fixed on the door.

Richie turned his head to look at Eddie; to study the new lines around his eyes and the sharpness of his jaw. He had a bad feeling about the fact that Stan wasn’t there, so it was better to dwell on niceties, for now.

“I don’t think he’ll be here any time soon,” Mike said quietly, and Eddie turned a little bit in his seat - enough to catch Richie looking. Richie didn’t avert his eyes, because he didn’t feel he had anything to be ashamed of, and his unabashedness was the unmistakable cause of Eddie’s ears going red.

Cute...

_“Cute, cute, cute,” Richie sang, fluffing Eddie’s hair with his fingers. “Eddie fuckin’ Spaghetti, you’re more Skywalker than Skywalker.”_

_They’d been Luke Skywalker and Han Solo for Halloween of 1992, also known as the last Halloween they’d trick-or-treated, and Richie had been annoying as shit all night. They hadn’t had a Chewbacca, so he’d taken it upon himself to make the noises every second house or so, much to Eddie’s chagrin._

_“You can’t be more Skywalker than Skywalker,” Eddie huffed, adjusting his belt. “And don’t call me Spaghetti. How has Stan handled doing this with you all these years?”_

_Richie shrugged easily. “Stan’s used to my bullshit. He’s dealt with it the longest.”_

_Eddie fixed him with a look, then, that made him feel like there were ants crawling up and down his arms. He flinched and stepped backwards, hoping that whatever was about to come out of Eddie’s mouth was more of a joke than it looked like it was going to be._

_“You and Stan…” he began slowly, looking at the sidewalk. “You’re friends.”_

_Richie had no idea where this was going. “Sure are. Friends, compadres, amigos, partners in crime...well, I do the crime, Stan brings the bail money, but you know what I--”_

_“Just friends?” Eddie asked, and Richie felt his grip on his trick-or-treat bag tighten. He had a feeling he knew what Eddie was implying, now._

_“Just friends,” Richie confirmed, looking at Eddie’s red face and wondering, wondering, wondering. “Why? Got a little crush, Dr. K? I don’t think you’re quite the little Jewish girl Stan’s looking for, but he might make an exception.”_

_He found himself hoping that Eddie would say no immediately. Something about the idea of Eddie having feelings for someone else just...didn’t sit right._

_“Shut up,” Eddie said, angrier than Richie was expecting. “You’re so…..I shouldn’t have even…...fuck you, Richie.”_

_He stomped down the street with Richie hot on his heels, offering apologies and jokes and anything, everything under the sun to get Eddie to smile at him again._

_If Richie’s memory served, Eddie didn’t speak to him again until_...well, he didn’t remember yet.

Richie tuned back in to find that he was still staring at Eddie, who was waving a hand in front of his face.

“Earth to Trashmouth,” Eddie was saying, “Mike’s ordered us food, and now people want to know if you get stopped for selfies in LA all the time.”

Richie stretched his face into the cheesiest smile he could manage. “Aw, Eds, you do care.”

“That’s not his name,” chorused the rest of the table before Eddie could open his mouth, and that led to a round of delighted laughter.

Excellent. Richie was back in his element.

“Eddie didn’t ask, Rich. I did,” Bill said, smiling at him from down the table. “What’s it like having 4 million Instagram followers?”

“Oh, props, Billiam,” Richie grinned, “that’s way nicer than the ‘what’s it like being the creepiest bitch on the block’ question I had for you. ‘Course, I could have asked you that at thirteen, too…”

“If I remember correctly,” Bill replied mildly, “there was a point during the fall of our eighth grade year when you were set and determined to become flexible enough to suck your own dick.”

It had been a long time since Richie had been able to match wits with anyone. He made deliberate, grateful eye contact with Bill. “Thirteen year old me was smart. He knew that no one else would be able to treat me like I could.”

“I take it that means no girlfriend, then,” Ben cut in, sipping his wine.

“Ah, shaddup.” Richie looked around and registered that he had no drink as of yet. That seemed like a mistake. He’d have to get one. Never mind that he was still nauseous from the Ibuprofen. “Where’s the waitress? I’m not drunk enough to talk to any of you.”

Eddie coughed quietly next to him, and Richie turned back around. Eddie didn’t have a drink besides water, either. Maybe that was why he had been so quiet.

“Anyway, what about you, Eds?” Richie’s mouth was yet again way ahead of his mind, and he had a strong and distinct feeling that he’d regret this as soon as he’d said it, but he had to know. “Seeing anyone?”

Eddie put his hands on the table. There was a simple gold band on the ring finger of his right hand.

Fuck.

“Oh, good for you, Spaghetti,” he said neutrally, mentally shifting into joke mode in an attempt to protect his feelings. “He nice? Beefy, heroic type? Make you breakfast in bed? Sing Disney songs to you? In short, is he Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson?”

Everyone was staring incredulously back at him, and it occurred to Richie that he might have overstepped his boundaries.

“ _Her_ name is Myra,” Eddie finally said, sliding his hands back under the table almost immediately after the sentence left his mouth. “She’s okay. I’m CEO of Via, and she manages the New York branch.”

Of all of the things that could have come out of Eddie’s mouth, the word ‘her’ was probably the one Richie expected the least. He felt his mouth hanging open, but he didn’t care. That was news that warranted a little bit of gaping.

“You founded Via?” Ben, bless him, was ready and waiting with a subject change. “I live near enough to Chicago that I use it whenever I’m there. Kudos on a really great rideshare app, man.”

“Thanks!” Eddie straightened up proudly. “When I graduated school, I worked as a limo chauffeur for a while. It was a pretty good marriage of my love of cars and my, um, cleanliness needs, but when Uber and Lyft came around I couldn’t resist jumping on the bandwagon.”

“You were always good with tech,” Bev remembered fondly. “You fixed Stan’s walkie-talkies that time, remember? And then Stan broke them again because Richie wouldn’t leave him alone.”

The mention of Stan’s name brought the mood back down. They all turned to Mike, awaiting news. Richie wanted to open his mouth and make a joke; didn’t want to hear whatever harrowing truths about Stan and the monster that Mike had to offer, but he was older and wiser now, and he knew his place. He waited, too.

“You want to know,” Mike said. It was not a question.

The waitress came over then, because she apparently had no sense of dramatic timing. Richie ordered two vodka tonics quickly and quietly, but was stopped by a hand on his arm.

“One vodka tonic and one gin and tonic,” Eddie corrected. “Thank you.”

The waitress departed, and Richie stared at Eddie, who had apparently developed mind-reading abilities at some point in the last three decades. Eddie shrugged in response.

“I knew the second vodka was for me,” he said, twisting his wedding ring around. “We always used to order doubles. Remember?”

“Wh--” Richie started, vague memories of ice cream and movie theatre popcorn flickering in and out of his mind’s eye, but Mike was speaking again, so he filed away his questions for later.

“I called Stan’s cellphone yesterday evening,” Mike said, looking at his hands like he didn’t want to be speaking at all. “He was all business, as usual. Clipped responses, curt ‘thank you’. It was nice to hear his voice.”

There was silence for a quick moment, and then Bill asked the question all of them were thinking.

“Was?”

Mike took a deep breath, and continued. “Two hours later, I got a call back. It was his wife, Patricia Blum-Uris. She was sobbing. Wanted to know what I’d said to him.”

“No,” Bev whispered, sliding a napkin off the table and twisting it anxiously in her hands. At the end of the table, Bill was sheet white.

“Between the time I’d called and the time Patricia called back,” Mike finished, voice breaking as he said the last few words, “Stan had taken his own life.”

That was the last straw for Richie and his nausea. He jolted out of his seat and sprinted to the bathroom he’d passed on the way in. By some miracle, he made it exactly as far as the toilet, and emptied the contents of his stomach (mostly booze and pills) into the waiting toilet water.

Stanley Uris was dead.

He’d forgotten about his best friend for 27 years, and now he was dead.

It was just like Stan had said in the sewers, all those years ago - they’d abandoned him in his time of need, they always did, they always had. They weren’t his friends. He’d died alone.

The sewers, fuck. The _sewers_. After they’d saved Stan, Eddie had been so brave; had plunged forward into graywater even through Sonia Kaspbrak’s conditioning, had come out of there filthy as sin and hadn’t broken down until they’d gotten him into the shower at Sonia’s, shivering and sobbing.

Richie thought about the band on Eddie’s finger, and rested the side of his head against the side of the bathroom stall, emotionally exhausted.

Yesterday morning, he had been unflappable, unshakable Richie Tozier, and now his childhood best friend had killed himself, the love of his life (or so he presumed, if only he could fucking _remember_ ) was married, he was puking in the toilet of a Chinese restaurant in ass-nowhere Maine, and none of it mattered because all six of the people he cared about (and he included himself in that number) were going to be dead within the week.

There was _definitely_ some kind of way to spin this into dark comedy. He’d pass on actually doing it, though - leave it for Colbert or Kimmel or someone to make after his corpse had been dragged to its permanent resting place in the literal bowels of Derry. It was a fitting grave for him, really. He’d always been full of shit.

(And there was the joke.)

Bill burst through the door then, looking to purge his feelings in the same way Richie just had. Politely, Richie reached up to flush, and then gestured Bill towards the bowl. Bill leaned down gratefully and retched for what seemed like hours. Richie would have held up his hair, if he’d had enough of it left to hold up.

“Thanks,” Bill said once he was finished.

“Sure,” Richie shrugged. “You all right, bud?”

Bill pointedly didn’t look at the ring on his right hand when he responded. “Yeah.”

“So,” Richie prompted.

“So what are we going to do?” Bill looked up at him, eyes blank, and in all the years that Richie had known him, he’d never seen Bill seem as small as he did then.

As much as Richie wanted to tell Bill that they could stay in here and cry; wanted to give mourning Stan the space and time it deserved, he knew that if he wasn’t the practical person in this situation, they’d all be toast sooner rather than later.

“We’re gonna eat some Chinese food,” Richie told him, sounding way surer than he felt. “We’ll decide about the rest after that.”

Bill nodded, and let Richie clean him up and lead him back to the table.

The rest of their Loser’s Club was looking pretty harrowed, so Richie didn’t feel too bad about how matted his hair had become from the nausea sweats. Ben and Bev were huddled together, murmuring to one another, Mike had his head in his hands at the head of the table, and Eddie...Eddie was leaning against the wall, staring off into space with red, hopeless eyes.

_“I knew you would make fun of me!”_

_“Eds, I’m really not, I just don’t know--”_

_“No, Richie. You do know, you’re just scared, or stupid, or both, I don’t know. And I’m scared, too, but at least I’m saying it. At least I’m here.”_

_“You’ve always been the braver of the two of us, Eds.”_

_“Oh my fucking...just shut up and answer me. Please.”_

_“Fuck.”_

Richie swore quietly under his breath. What had they been talking about? When would his memory give him something full and complete, instead of the patchwork quilt of instances he was currently getting?

“Let’s eat,” Bill announced. He had pulled himself together surprisingly well in the two minute walk back to the table. “Food’s here.”

Stiltedly, they all shuffled back to their seats and started spooning food on to their plates. Richie made sure to grab Eddie’s plate before he dug into it and separate out all the red peppers (he’d always loved peppers; Eddie had always hated them. Why his brain was giving him _that_ detail, he didn’t know, but Richie’s having picked them out had made Eddie smile, so...okay).

“So what’s the Derry news?” Bill asked Mike, visibly steeling himself for conversation about dead children. It was a subject that Bill had an amount of first-hand experience with, so it was natural that he’d want to get the talk out of the way.

Christ. _Georgie Denbrough._ No wonder it was feeling like Bill was on a different astral plane - he’d now lost two loved ones to this dark thing.

“Not tonight,” Mike said firmly. “We’ve had enough bad news for now. Tomorrow, we’ll debrief and set out to end this once and for all.”

Richie wasn’t sure he was ready for “once and for all”.

“ _If_ we stay, you mean,” he corrected, crossing his arms and trying not to care that Bev was looking at him like he’d betrayed her. “ _If_ we choose to be a part of this.”

“Would you leave, Rich?” Mike took a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket, wiped them down, and slid them on to his face in order to see Richie better. Richie looked away before the inevitable guilt could infect him. He wanted nothing less than to disappoint Mike Hanlon.

“Probably not,” Richie said honestly, “but I reserve the right to change my mind.”

“You left last time,” Bill said quietly, and that was absolutely the wrong thing to bring up. Eddie put a cautioning hand on his shoulder, but Richie was too angry to really notice.

“I came back,” Richie said, barely-contained rage evident in the tone of his voice. “After you _punched_ me, if you’ll remember.”

“Stop.” Mike’s voice was authoritative; his command was final. “We need to be a united front, not six individuals. That’s more important than ever, now that we’re down one.”

 _Down one._ What a way to put it. Richie grabbed the cocktail the waitress had left him while he was in the bathroom and drank half of it in one swallow.

“Listen, Rich.” Ben looked up from his wineglass, mouth drawn into a firm line. “I drank a whole fucking bottle of tequila after Mike called me yesterday. Was I kind of hoping to die? Yes. Do I have the sneaking suspicion you pulled some similar shit on the plane? Yes.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Richie rolled his eyes. “We’re here anyway, it’s cosmic fate, we have a responsibility, I know.”

“I’m staying.” Eddie’s voice rang clear beside him. “I want this to be done. We’re the only ones that can make this right.”

“Even if it means the sewer again, Eds?” Richie asked cautiously.

Eddie visibly shuddered, but nodded, tapping the table with his fork determinedly. “If that’s what it takes.”

They were most of the way through their meal at that point, and the waitress was back to offer around fortune cookies. Each of them took one, and Mike grabbed for the check. Bill stopped him almost immediately.

“Mike, we can’t let you do that. We got to reap the benefits of leaving this place. Heck, Richie and I have jobs in entertainment, Eddie’s the CEO of a company, Bev’s the next Alexander McQueen, and Ben...fuck, what is it you do, Ben?”

“Architect.” Ben, saint that he was, didn’t mind that Bill didn’t know what he did. “World-renowned. But anyway, the point stands, Mike. We left you out to dry with this town. The least we can do is pay for your food.”

Mike bristled. “I’m not interested in charity.”

“It’s not charity, it’s friendship.” Bev had her wallet out, and was waving around a card. “Put it on my card, for the love of God. I’ve just left my husband, and he deserves to field this charge.”

Mike cracked a smile. “Well, that, I’m not sure I can argue with.”

“You can’t,” Bev agreed, reaching for her fortune cookie.

All at once, things seemed to go wrong.

Richie had downed his whole vodka tonic and half of Eddie’s gin and tonic at that point, so he wasn’t sure how much of the fucked up shit with the fortune cookies actually happened. Most of what he remembered about it was too many legs, slithering, and the entire group making a beeline for their cars.

Richie knew that the ghostly whisper of _“wanna play loogie?”_ he’d heard in there would render him entirely unable to sleep that night. He also had a feeling that he wasn’t alone in feeling spooked, and so when he moved to say goodnight to Eddie, he whispered his room number - 204 - in Eddie’s ear, and hoped.

To his surprise and great joy, Eddie was waiting for him when he reached the Townhouse. Seeing Eddie in the doorway, illuminated from behind by the lights of the lobby, was making Richie’s skin buzzy again, and he bit down on his knuckles to try and get the sensation to go away.

God, he hated feeling feelings. He always had. Why else would he have chosen the career he had? Why else would he have subconsciously fixated on someone that he knew would never love him back? If it’s out of reach, you don’t have to think about it seriously; if it becomes a joke, then it can be laughed away instead of cried.

He tried to concentrate on that thought as he approached Eddie, but he was immensely distracted by the fact that his heart felt like it was trying to escape his chest.

“I’m fourth floor,” Eddie explained once Richie was close enough to him. “Yours is closer. Do you mind?”

“Sure Eds, I’ll take you upstairs, but it’s extra charge if you want to then have your wicked way with me.” Richie was back to his old deflections, and they both knew it. Eddie didn’t dignify him with a response, just turned and headed up the stairs, expecting Richie to follow with the key.

Richie took a minute to watch him walk away, because he was only human, and then followed immediately behind.

When they reached the room, Richie stepped in front of Eddie, pulling his hotel key out of the pocket of his jacket. He could feel Eddie’s eyes on his hands as he deftly unlocked the door, and the observation went straight to his ego. He’d never been much to look at, generally speaking (that’s why he did late night comedy and not Marvel movies), but it was nice to feel like he had one or two features worth noticing.

He was surprised when Eddie followed him into the room right away. “What’s this, Eds? I thought you’d be holding a thing of Lysol out in front of you like a crucifix. Hotel rooms are gross.”

“They are,” Eddie agreed, “but the Townhouse houses guests, like, twice a year, so I’m not really concerned. It’s just dusty.”

“Isn’t that bad for your asthma?” Richie asked, sitting tenuously on the edge of the bed and looking up at Eddie, who was still taking stock of the room.

“I don’t know,” Eddie said softly, touching the pocket of his jacket where Richie assumed he kept his inhaler. Richie had carried one for him, too, back in the day. Eddie had chastised him pretty regularly for keeping it in his pants pocket, where it could be sat on or easily broken, but Richie wouldn’t have let that happen. It was his prized possession. “I don’t know if I even have asthma, Richie. I can’t remember what’s real.”

Richie took a shaky breath and patted the bed next to him. “Me either. I have some questions, though.”

“Same,” Eddie nodded, moving with what seemed like great difficulty to join Richie on the bed. The energy between them had been charged from the moment they’d laid eyes on one another, but when Richie felt the bed dip beside him, it was like the whole room had been imbibed with extra electricity. It was a wonder they weren’t causing a power surge.

“So your wife,” Richie began, feeling like it was the safest course of action to start with the item that involved him the least.

“Yeah.” Richie’s breath got a little stuck in his throat as he watched Eddie yank off his ring and shove it inelegantly into his jacket pocket. “I didn’t mean...I didn’t mean it.”

“You married her, Eds,” Richie chided, beside himself with disbelief that he was having this conversation with Eddie fucking Kaspbrak, of all people.

“To keep myself safe,” Eddie said, pointedly not looking at Richie. “Some part of me knew that I wasn’t going to fall in love again, and to be...to be….”

“To be gay,” Richie finished for him.

“Yeah. It didn’t seem worth it. I get enough shit for everything else, you know?”

It was true. Eddie had always had it worse than the rest of them in heteronormative Derry just by sheer virtue of his small stature and softer, more stereotypically feminine features. Still, hiding didn’t seem like it was characteristic of the Eddie he had known. Eddie had charged through the sewers, through that old house on Neibolt street, through the Barrens, and into Richie’s heart. It was surprising to hear that he hadn’t taken New York by storm, too.

“I’m not brave out there,” Eddie continued, as if he could hear what Richie was thinking. “The only time in my whole life when I was ever brave was that summer, with all of you.”

Christ. What the fuck was it about Derry, Maine? Eddie was brave again, all of Richie’s long-repressed feelings were coming back into the forefront of his being, and the rest of them were almost certainly upstairs having crises of their own.

“You were brave after that summer, too,” Richie reminded him. “You told me something brave when we were sixteen, close to when you moved away, but I don’t remember.”

In response, Eddie turned his whole body to face Richie, sitting cross-legged on the bed. Richie understood the magnitude of the movement, and was too afraid to do anything but turn his head slightly to stare at Eddie’s ankle.

“You do remember, I think,” Eddie said softly, and Richie bit down on the inside of his cheek. It had been enough time since the restaurant that he was mostly sober, and he really didn’t want to be having this conversation sober. A million jokes bubbled up in his throat, and he swallowed them all back down.

Love wasn’t fucking funny.

“I was so afraid of you,” he said instead, turning to look at Eddie more fully; allowing his eyes to sweep over the faded freckles on his cheeks and his nose. “I understood what I was doing with the rest of them. Ben and Mike were my resources, Stan was my best friend, Bev was my partner in crime, Bill was our hero.”

“We were all a little in love with Bill, I think,” Eddie smiled, eyes trained somewhere in the distance.

“Yep.” Richie remembered thinking of Bill as a statue: something grandiose that you could marvel at from afar, but never keep for yourself. “No one more than Stan. Fucked that we all grew up and buried our truths in relationships with women, huh?”

Eddie shrugged, seemingly at peace with it. “When you can’t have what you really want, even if you don’t know you want it, you have to make do with what you have.”

That made sense. “Damn, Eds, when’d you get so wise?”

“Some of us are dumbasses, and some of us are not,” Eddie said sagely. “Speaking of, when I told you how I felt, do you remember what you said?”

_“I just...I don’t know if I’m gay, Eds. I don’t think so.”_

_“Really, Rich? Then why did you pull away from Brenda Arrowsmith when she went to try something with you at homecoming? Bill and Ben said she’s the hottest girl in our grade.”_

_“That doesn’t mean--”_

_“And the only person you’re affectionate with is me. The ONLY person. You wouldn’t dream of kissing Bill’s cheek, or Stan’s.”_

_“Eddie, could you please--”_

_“Just, if you’re not...whatever, you’re being really fucking unfair, and….maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore.”_

_“Okay, that’s bullshit. Not being friends is bullshit. Not to mention that you’re fucking moving in two weeks anyway--”_

_“I said what I said.”_

_“What am I supposed to tell you, then?”_

_“Nothing. Don’t tell me anything. Don’t talk to me, don’t write to me, just...forget, okay? And I’ll forget, too, like Bev did.”_

_“I’m not gonna forget, jackass. I’m never going to fucking forget you, and I’m not going to stop being your friend just because you said--”_

_“Just shut up, Richie, just...shut up, okay? I’m going now.”_

_“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”_

_“No. No you won’t.”_

Richie buried his face in his hands, mortified by his own stupidity.

“It’s like I said,” he finally managed. “I was afraid. I was afraid of you, I was afraid of myself, of what it would mean if I was...I mean, fuck. I was sixteen, Eds. I didn’t know shit at sixteen about what mattered.”

Eddie was almost in his lap at that point. He had scooted far enough forward that his calves were pressed against Richie’s left thigh. Richie wanted to touch him; to run his hands up his legs and make up for lost time.

“Are you still afraid?” Eddie asked, eyes heartbreakingly big behind the glasses that were slipping down his face.

Richie was too much of a coward to answer that question outright, so he countered with a query of his own. “Before...you said that you settled for your wife because you weren’t going to fall in love.”

“I wasn’t going to fall in love _again_ ,” Eddie corrected, every inch the brave, brilliant, resilient man Richie had devoted himself to all those years ago. “Turns out, once was enough.”

There were a zillion ways to spin this; to make this funny. There were jokes about Richie’s own physical attractiveness that could be made, he could talk about Eddie’s tastes, make a car pun, maybe, if the mood was right…

To keep himself from continuing to think or, God forbid, say any of that, he took off Eddie's glasses, deposited them on the nightstand, and then lunged forward and attached his mouth to Eddie’s, letting himself forget for a moment about who and what the two of them had grown up to be. Eddie seemed to be desperate to do the same. He kissed back immediately, burying his fists in the fabric of Richie’s jacket.

It wasn’t like he had imagined it would be, way back when. Eddie’s lips weren’t chapstick waxy, and he didn’t taste like a hospital. Hell, Richie hadn’t even had to brush his teeth before Eddie let him lick into his mouth - and he’d vomited earlier in the evening, too. It all came down to the specific situation, he supposed. Tonight, there was no time for little things. This wasn’t _‘welcome to the rest of our lives’_ , this was _‘the world is ending tomorrow’_ , and as Richie caught Eddie’s lower lip in his teeth and tugged, his only thought was to make sure that their last night on Earth was their best.

Eddie was a little shakier. It was obvious that he hadn’t been romantically involved with anyone in a while; his kissing technique was unpracticed and he hesitated every time he moved his hands, as if expecting to be chastised. After a few minutes of that, Richie broke the kiss and looked at him seriously.

“You can touch me,” he whispered, guiding Eddie’s hands up to cup his face. “If you want to. And if you don’t want to...if your wife....”

“No, no. Don’t want to think about her. Just you.” Eddie closed his eyes, slid his hands up Richie’s jawline, and shifted slightly to tangle them into his hair. He gave an experimental tug, and Richie let out a sharp noise. As unsure as Eddie was, he knew Richie, still knew Richie, and it looked like he was going to make sure that Richie remembered that.

(It wasn’t like Richie was going to be able to forget. He was absolutely positive that whatever memory fog he’d been stuck in was over, and THIS was sticking for sure. He’d never had sex with anyone that he felt really knew him before. This was a benchmark of emotional vulnerability for him. Who needed a therapist? All he needed to make breakthroughs, apparently, was Eddie Kaspbrak.)

Sighing happily, he pulled Eddie more fully into his lap and pushed at his jacket, wanting it off so he could have access to more skin. Eddie easily acquiesced, and Richie was on him milliseconds after the jacket was gone, kissing and biting at all of the freckles on Eddie’s neck that he could reach with his mouth. Eddie was very much a fan of this new course of action if the soft, approving noises coming out of him were anything to go by. His hands hadn’t left Richie’s hair, which was fine by Richie. Every time Eddie pulled even slightly, it was going straight to Richie’s dick.

God, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this turned on. Maybe never. At any rate, it had been a long time since he’d even considered the idea of sex in a serious way. He didn’t even jack off regularly anymore. It didn’t seem like it mattered.

He’d never been so glad to be wrong about anything.

Eddie let his hands wander up and under Richie’s jacket, and Richie let it slide off of his shoulders, not caring about how wrinkled and fucked up it was going to be in the morning. He’d wear something else to fight the fucking monster. He moved to unbutton his undershirt, too, while he was thinking about it, but Eddie pushed his hands aside and did the buttons himself. Richie watched him as he went down, down, down, mesmerized by the movements of his deft little fingers.

“You have beautiful hands,” he blurted, tugging his arms out of his sleeves distractedly.

“So do you,” Eddie replied, reaching down to intertwine the fingers of his own right hand with Richie’s left. “Hands, eyes, lips, hair. I’m sure your Instagram comments are full of sexual solicitations.”

“I do get the occasional ‘fuck me daddy’,” Richie laughed, tugging at Eddie’s shirtsleeve, “but more ‘shut up, ugly’, if you know what I mean. Okay if this comes off?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, frowning as he unbuttoned his own undershirt, “but I’ll kick anyone’s ass that ever calls you ugly again.”

“You’ve gotta pick fewer battles than that,” Richie murmured, staring at the expanse of Eddie’s chest as it was revealed through unbuttoning. The freckles continued all the way down, and Richie couldn’t help but marvel at how they complimented the fine, almost blonde trail of hair that disappeared into his pants. Eddie was lean and wiry - not muscled, perse, but unmistakably masculine, and any follow-up jokes Richie might have had about his own mediocre appearance died on his tongue.

Eddie’s ears were red again, but he made no move to cover his body. In fact, he leaned back, putting on a little bit of a show for Richie. “Still not gay?” he teased.

“You’re such a little shit,” Richie responded breathlessly, collecting Eddie back into his arms and running his fingers over every single inch of skin he could find. In a moment of particular boldness, he dipped into Eddie’s pants, and reveled in the shudder that drew out of both of them.

“Can those come off, too?” he whispered into Eddie’s ear, well aware of how wildly his heart was beating against his ribs, and the fact that Eddie could probably feel it, too.

Richie felt Eddie’s sharp inhale against his neck, and was about to withdraw when he felt Eddie’s arms snake down to undo the button on his pants - and then the button on Richie’s pants.

Holy Christ.

“Okay,” Richie said, bracing himself. “Okay. We’re really gonna...hah. Here. Let’s…” He pushed Eddie off of his lap, and sank down on to the bed so that his eyes were level with Eddie’s crotch. He had pretty fastidiously avoided hooking up with men up to this point, and so really only had experience with blowjobs on the receiving end, but given that this was Eddie, he was feeling like it was something he wanted to do. Like, really, really wanted to do.

He could almost see the Buzzfeed article now: paparazzi cellphone videos showing him coming out of the Derry Townhouse with hickies on his neck and a raspy voice, all under the heading: _Uh, Call Us Crazy, But Did Richie Tozier Suck a Dick Last Night?_

It wasn’t looking like that was in the cards, though. Eddie was tugging frantically at his head, trying to get him to sit up. There was palpable panic in Eddie’s eyes. Richie righted himself immediately.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie was saying, “I just...the _thing_ , last time, I can’t--”

“It’s okay.” Richie scooted up so that their noses were almost touching. “I should have asked.”

“I don’t want to have sex either,” Eddie added quickly, “I didn’t...there’s stuff you have to do to prep for that, I think, and--”

“Anything you want,” Richie said honestly, opening his arms. “Spaghetti, sweetheart, I’ll take you any way I can get you, at this point. It’s the end of the fucking world."

Eddie nodded, seemingly (strangely) comforted by the thought. “Yeah, okay. End of the fucking world. What was that Smiths song you used to sing all the time?”

“To die by your side,” Richie sang quietly, kissing at Eddie’s cheekbones.

“I liked it when you would sing,” Eddie smiled, and brought Richie down for another proper kiss. “I liked everything about you. Your jokes, your dreams.”

“Can I touch you?” Richie whispered by way of response, sliding his hands up Eddie’s still-clothed thighs like he’d wanted to from the moment he laid eyes on him and tugging his pants down a little bit. Eddie nodded, bumping his forehead against Richie’s and putting his hand over where Richie was reaching into his underwear. Together, they made contact with where Eddie was waiting, half-hard, and Richie could almost feel Eddie’s resulting hiss in his _bones_.

The feeling of his hand on a dick that wasn’t his own was...not altogether unpleasant. In fact, it was pretty fucking cool. He spat in his hand, reached back down, and put a little extra pressure on the vein on the underside of Eddie’s dick, just to see what would happen. Eddie’s responding groan was absolutely magical. Richie could have some serious fun with this.

Eddie removed his hand from Richie’s after the first couple of strokes, and leaned back, watching Richie work and breathing heavily. After a few silent, heated moments, he pushed himself back up and went for Richie again.

“You too,” he said, explaining. “Wanna touch you, too.”

Richie removed his hand from Eddie to pull down his pants enough that his own dick was accessible, and let Eddie do the rest. Eddie responded more eagerly than Richie could have ever anticipated, scootching forward and running his thumb over the head of Richie’s cock so slowly, so fucking filthily, that if he didn’t know better, Richie would have sworn that Eddie had done this before. Richie felt frozen to his seat, staring helplessly as Eddie smiled sweetly back at him, spat in his own hand, and went to work.

“From the bragging you used to do as a kid, I expected more,” Eddie teased, exhaling lowly as Richie finally got himself together enough to resume his ministrations.

“It’s - ah! It’s called upselling, Eds,” Richie huffed, almost too lost in Eddie’s incredible hands to be able to string together words. “You, uh, ah...you run a business. You should know. Fuck!” Eddie twisted his wrist sharply, and Richie was forced to face the unfortunate fact that things were already just about finished for him. He felt like he was twenty again, getting handies in Shelly O’Brian’s car in the parking lot of In-N-Out and finishing embarrassingly quickly each and every time, a visual of soft brown eyes and tousled brown-blonde hair bringing him over the edge in a way that Shelly by herself just couldn’t manage.

“You’re close,” Eddie whispered, surging up to breathe the words into Richie’s mouth, and Richie all but whimpered.

“So close, baby,” he responded shakily, “so fucking close.”

“Me, too,” Eddie said, voice breaking a little bit, “Richie--”

The sound of Eddie’s wrecked voice saying his name was enough to knock Richie into the best orgasm he’d had in a full decade. He buried his face into Eddie’s shoulder and cried out sharply as Eddie stroked him through it - and Eddie was stroking himself, now, had pushed Richie’s hand aside in an attempt to speed up his process. Richie couldn’t tear his eyes from him. If he were a younger man, it wouldn’t take him more than five minutes of watching Eddie get himself off before he was hard again.

But he was old, and Eddie was finished. He came with a quiet whine, collapsing backwards against the bedsheet as it happened. His hair was splayed out behind his head, his face was red, and his pants were still bunched around his ankles.

It was that moment more than any other that made Richie wish he had more time. He’d wasted 27 years of his life without Eddie Kaspbrak, and now they’d had their moment, and it was done.

It was done.

Wordlessly, he got up to get a facecloth from the bathroom, and together, they silently cleaned themselves (and the bedsheets, as best they could) up. Eddie pulled up his pants, and Richie was seized with cold fear.

“Stay,” he asked, not caring how desperate he sounded. “Eds, please.”

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie said, but he was coming back to bed all the same. He crawled in next to Richie, fitting himself under Richie’s arm, and staring up at him with a serious expression. “Hey.”

“Hm?” Richie looked at him, willing himself to stay awake, to not miss a second of the time he had left.

“You know….” Eddie was trying to put together a string of words that Richie understood exactly; he was thinking them himself, right then, at that very moment. “You know I…”

“I know,” Richie assured him, and Eddie buried his face in Richie’s chest.

They didn’t have time to doze off. The phone rang less than five minutes later.

Richie got up and grabbed it. It was his room, after all, and he wasn’t sure if Eddie would appreciate other people knowing that he was there. “Hello?”

“Rich, it’s Bill. Mike’s been hurt; we need to go to the hospital right now. Come downstairs.”

Richie scanned the room for his destroyed jacket. “How bad? Was it…the thing?”

“Not the clown,” Bill said, and for a brief moment Richie’s mind was inundated with creepy statuettes, and a vivid image of himself with his mouth sewn shut. “Henry Bowers.”

Richie almost choked on his own spit. “What?”

“Just come,” Bill ordered, “and bring Eddie.”

Fuck.

“How did you know?” Richie asked softly. Eddie was watching him with tired, worried eyes, and Richie wanted to let him go to sleep; wanted to exclude him from this whole great terrible business, or at the very least be able to assure him that he hadn’t outed them both to Bill Denbrough.

“You’re the two least subtle people on planet Earth,” Bill said, and to Richie’s great relief, his tone was fond. “Listen, I don’t care. You and Eddie, Ben and Bev. Whoever can be happy among us deserves to be happy.”

Richie thought of Stan, of the careful way that Stan used to adjust Bill’s shirts and cardigans so that they sat neatly across his shoulders, and understood. “Roger that. Thanks, Bill.”

“Come downstairs,” Bill repeated, and hung up.

“Do we have to leave?” Eddie asked, sitting up.

“Yes,” Richie said, and left it at that.

\----

They found themselves headed for the house on Neibolt Street far before any of them were ready.

The creature had freed Henry Bowers from the treatment ward he was in and sent him after Mike with a semi-automatic. Mike was able to get out of the way of the gun and kill Henry, but Henry had managed to fire a round into Mike’s leg before the finishing blow was delivered. Mike was alive, but in no condition to be moving around, so they were down to just five for the final fight. They decided as a collective that they should probably go and do that before anyone else could be knocked out up above, and thus - Neibolt Street.

“I fucking hate this house,” Richie said sourly, making a face at the rotting wood and moth-eaten drapes. He was really glad he’d packed a pair of sweatpants; Valentino wouldn’t be a wise option for where they were heading.

“Same,” chorused the rest of the group. Bill was halfway up the stairs already (he had always been sort of anxious to jump into situations that would get the rest of them killed, for whatever suicidal reason), but upon hearing Richie’s words, he turned back around.

“I’m glad you’re here, Richie,” he said, looking him in the eyes and giving him a solemn nod.

“I couldn’t leave you guys,” Richie admitted, looking quickly at each of them, and then doubling back to look a little longer at Eddie. “You’re the only real friends I’ve ever had.”

The others looked around at each other at that, sharing empathetic glances. None of them had to voice their agreeance. It was understood.

“Let’s kill the fucking clown, okay?” Bev asked after a long moment, moving up to join Bill on the steps of the house. “Again.”

“Next time, let’s pick a clown that dies the first time you kill it,” Richie suggested, trudging his way up after Bev and watching Eddie follow him in his peripheral vision. “And I’m only kind of joking about that.”

“Noted.” Bill opened the door, and one by one, they stepped inside.

There was no turning back now.

“There was a well, right?” Ben asked, obviously trying his best to ignore the plethora of ominous, dusty objects around him. Richie wondered whether the old Richie Tozier ‘Missing’ poster was hidden somewhere in the clutter. The thought made his eyes hurt a little. 

“This way,” Eddie said, pushing past Richie and walking to the right. They followed him trustingly; Eddie’s sense of direction had always been impeccable. On their way, they passed a fridge, which served to remind Richie of exactly how thirteen year old Eddie’s terrified face looked up close. He had tried to hold it when they saw the clown in here the first time, because he hadn’t wanted that horrifying face to be the last thing Eddie saw before he died.

He sped up his walk and made his way to the front of the group. Swiftly and without explanation, he grabbed Eddie’s hand and laced their fingers together. Eddie raised an eyebrow, but didn’t let go.

He looked back to gauge the reactions of the rest of the group, but all three of them were pretty preoccupied with being terrified, so they weren’t really paying attention. Good. It was a conversation for later, if there was going to be a later.

“Here,” said Eddie, gesturing with his free hand. The well was still intact, and there was vague pipe music playing from within. Richie’s eyes stung worse in looking at it. He rubbed at them with the back of his hand.

“Ominous,” Richie commented, trying to mask his terror. “Kind of stereotypical, though. Cheap horror. Soon there’ll be a jumpscare--”

“Shove it, Rich,” Bev muttered, moving to the front of the group and grabbing the rope.

“Shove what? I’m just trying to help,” Richie defended himself. “Even in these trying times, I’m still here to make you all laugh - see, I really am great.”

“You sure about this, Bev?” Ben asked, ignoring Richie entirely. “You didn’t have to do this with us last time. You were already here.”

“I remember getting out,” she said firmly. “And I want to be the first person to hand that fucking thing its ass.”

“Lead the way, then,” Ben allowed, and she disappeared down the well.

Ben was next, and then Eddie, and then Richie himself was climbing down that stupid, frayed rope, trying to ignore how it burned his hands. They’d be bright red for weeks, which really fucking sucked, because how was he supposed to be on air with fucked up hands? Was there makeup for that?

But, no. He wasn’t going to be on air anymore, probably. Why did he keep forgetting that he was going to die here?

He clambered after the rest of them, listening for Bill’s footsteps behind him and trying to keep his eyes trained on Eddie’s small, set figure in front of him. He was having trouble, though. His contacts were really bugging him.

“My eyes hurt, Eds,” he whispered into the darkness. “I can’t see.”

Eddie was with him in an instant. Richie felt a small hand slip into his, and immediately, his breathing steadied. “Take them out, Rich.”

“I can’t,” Richie replied immediately, horrified at the thought of facing down the monster blind.

“I’ve got you,” Eddie insisted. “You’ll stay with me. Take them out.”

Without letting himself think too hard about it, Richie acquiesced, fishing his lenses out of his eyes and dropping them into the disgusting sewer water. Immediately, the burning stopped, but everything was blurry now. He was basically useless to them like this.

“All right, Richie? Eddie?” Bill asked. Richie could hear his footsteps getting closer and closer behind them.

“We’re okay,” Eddie promised, leading Richie up and towards where Ben and Bev were waiting.

After a bit more walking, and a lot more nervous chatter from Richie, they came upon what Richie was told was a door. They’d hit a door the last time, too, with some kind of symbol on it. Richie remembered the marking as being vaguely inhaler shaped.

“It’s different now, isn’t it?” Bev asked, unsure. “It’s just a couple of lines. An ‘X’ to mark IT’s spot.”

“I’d tell you if I could,” Richie said, unable to keep the shakiness out of his voice at that point. Eddie gripped his arm tighter.

“Do you remember what I told you?” Eddie’s mouth was suddenly right next to Richie’s ear, and his words were so soft that Richie had to strain to hear them. “Last night?”

“I remember,” Richie assured him, wishing to God he could see Eddie clearly, and then Bill was opening the door to the monster’s lair, and there was no more time for soft words.

IT was waiting for them in the center of the room. Richie couldn’t see exactly what form IT had chosen, but it was definitely not the clown; in fact, the white expanse of IT’s body stretched all the way up to the ceiling. IT seemed to be in some kind of nest.

There were objects in the nest. Richie could just make them out - blurry, bigger shapes against the white lines of ropes. Everyone immediately began whispering about it.

“Eggs? Are those--”

“Who’s up there, I can’t tell--”

“Tom?!?”

_“Audra?!?!”_

Richie didn’t have time to ask any questions. IT was moving towards them almost immediately after that, and Eddie was yanking on his arm, pulling him safely off to the side.

“Eds, tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do.” Richie was beginning to seize up with panic. This was really fucking bad.

“Bill’s wife and Bev’s husband - ex-husband - are here somehow,” Eddie frantically explained, leading Richie from hiding spot to hiding spot in a frenzy. “They’ve gone off to take care of that, and Ben said something about eggs, but I don’t know what we--”

"Eggs?" Richie asked, attention pulled suddenly and sharply to something in the distance. He couldn't see Bill, but something was going on...

"I don't know, Richie," Eddie said, obviously panicked, "I really don't know, and I don't know how to help, and I--"

Normally, Richie would try to put out the flames of a Kaspbrak panic attack, but his entire mind was quickly orienting itself towards the center of the room, where he could somehow sense that Bill was making some kind of cosmic power move. If he concentrated hard (and he was trying to), he could almost hear the two of them communicating back and forth. IT had challenged him - or he had challenged IT, one of the two - to some sort of speaking contest, and now Bill needed to catch IT’s tongue and outtalk IT. Richie had never heard of such a thing before, but somehow, he had an intrinsic knowledge of what was needed to win the contest...and he was much, much, MUCH better suited to it than Bill.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised Eddie, and he ignored Eddie's responding shriek in favor of taking off in Bill’s general direction, tripping and wobbling around various objects but catapulting himself forward anyway.

This was how Richie was going to save them all. He was going to push his feelings out of the way and fucking joke the thing to death. 

Even with his eyesight slowing him down, he managed to get there just in time. Bill had made a spectacular reach for IT’s tongue, but had missed, which gave Richie a window of space to make a leap for it and, ultimately, connect.

IT plunged him into darkness, and he was left to do what he did best: talk.

He talked like he had NEVER talked before. He told jokes, he did voices, he pulled out each and every stop like it was a Saturday Night Live audition tape on crack...and still, it wasn’t enough. His grip on the tongue started to slip, and Bill was drifting farther away.

When Richie had just begun to resign himself to despair, Eddie’s voice came to him seemingly out of nowhere, calling his name. It sounded like it was at the end of a tunnel, or like he was calling on a cellphone with a bad connection. Spatially, Richie knew he couldn’t actually be that far away, but metaphysically, who was to say? He latched on to Eddie’s shouts like they were the rope in the well, and beyond him, he felt Bill latch on to him, and they were being pulled up, up, up…

...and suddenly, they were back in the sewer. Richie stumbled back dizzily, trying to get his bearings in a world he couldn’t see. IT was staggering, seemingly wounded. In the distance, he recognized Ben’s yellow hair - he was smashing things up above. Bev’s little orange flame of a body was visible off to the side, and Bill was getting up beside him...but where was Eddie?

It was then that he smelled it: blood, and lots of it, trailing back and up towards one of IT’s piles of stuff.

He immediately went into a full panic.

“Eds!” he shouted, not caring how conspicuous that made him. IT could rip him through all of space and time for all he cared. He needed to get to Eddie. “Eds, where are you?”

“Richie!” Eddie’s voice was thin and hoarse, and Richie’s heart slammed angrily against his ribcage. He had to get there in time. _He had to get there in time_.

He found him behind a stack of wet, sewer-ruined children’s books. The blood was his, that much was for sure, and it looked like...oh, holy shit…

“My arm,” Eddie wheezed, breathing in a way that would suggest that he was hyperventilating. “I think it’s gone, Richie, I think it’s--”

“Shh,” Richie whispered, moving around and pulling him into his lap, not caring about the copious amount of blood that was getting on to his clothes. “Don’t move, okay?”

“Richie?” Bev was looking for them. Richie could hear her quiet footsteps nearby. “Eddie? Oh my GOD!” She’d obviously gotten a good look at Eddie. Eddie began to shake again, frightened by her tone, and Richie buried his face in Eddie’s hair in an attempt to calm him.

(Not that Richie was calm himself, of course. He was shaking profusely. It was probably not helping things.)

“It’s gonna be okay, sweetheart,” he murmured, kissing the top of Eddie’s head desperately. “We’re gonna get out of here, okay?”

“I don’t think so,” Eddie said. His voice sounded so fucking small. Richie gripped him tighter. 

“Eds--”

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie cut in immediately, the ghost of a laugh evident in his voice. He moved in Richie’s arms in an attempt to draw himself closer to Richie, and Richie immediately leaned in. “You know….you know I….”

Richie remembered back to the hotel, and choked back a sob.

“I know,” Richie told him, openly crying. “Me too, Eds, I know.”

Eddie didn’t respond.

Richie was vaguely aware of a creepy, inhuman noise sounding from somewhere in the room. Bev was beside him (she probably had been for some time now), and was trying to tug him up and away, but he couldn’t go, he _wouldn’t_ go, he would die here, too. He had to. What did he have left to live for? 

He’d lost the one thing - the _only_ fucking thing in his life that wasn’t a joke.

“Richie, stop,” Bev was begging, “stop making that noise, we have to go. Bill took IT’s heart out and Ben smashed the eggs, we have Audra, we have to _go._ ”

Oh. He hadn’t realized that he was the one making the inhuman noise, but he couldn’t seem to stop it. He clung desperately to Eddie’s body and sank down into the water. He wasn’t going to face a world without Eddie. He wasn’t strong enough. Eddie had been the one who had been strong.

“Richie!” Bill had come over, too. He had a figure - Audra, presumably - slung over his back. “Come on, we have to leave him. I can’t carry Audra by myself the whole way, I’ll need Ben for that, and you can’t see, so you can’t carry. We’ve got to make sure those of us that are still alive make it out of here. It has to be Audra. Let’s go.”

“I don’t want to,” Richie hissed.

There were hands under both of his armpits, then, and he was being physically hoisted up. Ben had him in a grip that he couldn’t shake.

“We’re going,” Ben said. “He wouldn’t want you to stay here.”

Richie was crying too hard to fight back at that point, and Ben was way, way stronger than him, so his thrashing was weak, without purpose, and inconsequential. Still, he felt every inch of distance between himself and Eddie’s body in his soul as Ben brought him out of IT’s lair and back into the sewers proper.

As soon as the door closed, Ben put him down and moved to help Bill with Audra. Richie immediately started back, throwing himself against the door, but it was sealed shut.

Bev turned back to look at him. He assumed she was gazing at him piteously, but he couldn't tell - still couldn't fucking _see_. “What’d you do that for?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” he yelled, not bothering to joke or keep his emotions under any kind of control.

There was no joke in the world that would ever make this feel any better.

That much he knew well enough

\----

Richie was back to work the next Monday, much to the network’s relief. His trip to Derry had been uneventful, as far as he remembered - although it was all a bit hazy. That much wasn’t surprising, though. He’d forgotten more than his fair share of weekends over the course of his career, and there was really no other way to get through weekends in the middle of the New England woods without being blackout drunk and/or high.

It had been nice to see his friends, though. What was the redheaded guy’s name again? Brian?

“Richie!” The crew was hissing to get his attention. “You’re back on air in five, four, three, two…”

“And welcome back to the Late Late Show!” Richie laid it on thick for the camera. He was sure that his viewers missed him; he wasn’t about to deprive anyone of a show. “I’m Richie Tozier, and here’s what’s going on in the world.”

He turned to face a different camera, and focused his eyes on the teleprompter. His hand reached out subconsciously to push his glasses up his nose, and he frowned at it. He hadn’t worn glasses or been without his contacts in years. What was that little tic doing back?

“A small town in Maine flooded over without warning or explanation this weekend,” he read, repeating the words without really processing them. “Derry, Maine is now three-quarters of the way underwater, and Maine police are still working to find bodies in the wreckage…”

He paused, thinking over what he had just read. This was the part where he was supposed to make an off-the-cuff joke about the news item, or say something heartfelt that would leave the watchers feeling good about the situation, but as he reread the last bit about ‘bodies in the wreckage’, he felt an ache in his chest that he couldn’t identify or seem to get rid of, and no joke or thoughtful comment seemed appropriate in light of that.

For once in his life, Richie Tozier was speechless.

The crew was buzzing around him, anxiously trying to cover his silence. They pointed frantically to the teleprompter, where a new message was coming up on the screen.

“And we’ll be right back after these messages,” Richie choked out quickly, and made a dash for the bathroom immediately upon getting the signal that they were off the air.

An assistant followed him in, presumably to find out what was up. “Everything okay, Mr. Tozier? What’s going on?”

Richie stared at his reflection in the mirror. Logically, he knew that it was just his reflection staring back, but his mind couldn’t seem to shake the image of a pair of giant brown eyes.

“I don’t know,” he said, unable to bring himself out of his vision. “It won’t happen again.”

“Whatever you say,” said the assistant, leaving the bathroom. “We’re back on in a minute thirty.”

Richie closed his eyes, and tried to think back.

 _“Richie,”_ a voice in the back of his mind whispered. _“You know…”_

What? What did he know?

_“You know I…”_

Ugh, he must have taken some terrible fucking drugs up in New England. He’d stick to West-Coast stuff next time, no question. It would take until Wednesday to get this shit out of his system, most likely. What a fucking bummer.

“Thirty seconds!” The assistant was knocking on the bathroom door again. Richie rolled his shoulders, took a deep breath, and walked back out to do his show.

When the Derry story was fed to him again, he had a punchline for it.

The aching emptiness he felt in thinking about brown eyes lost in the sweep of the Derry tide didn’t fade, but that was all part of the job.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for bearing with me.
> 
> I know that there's way more shit that happens in the book, but I'm not Stephen King and as such am easily exhausted in my writing, so...no zombie baseball game, no Richie Tozier undead concert radio thing. it didn't make sense with what I was doing anyway :( 
> 
> also, because this is Richie's POV, we miss things like Bill staying with Mike for a little bit and learning about Chud, Ben and Bev hooking up in the room directly above Richie and Eddie, etc. but rest assured they happened, just...in my head and not on the page, haha.
> 
> come yell at me about this in the comments or at skeletonscribbles.tumblr.com.
> 
> aaand finally, here's a Richie/Eddie angst playlist in case you want to feel EVEN MORE SAD. listen to what I was listening to when I wrote this if you dare: https://open.spotify.com/user/1219701114/playlist/6b5FfneX4IbakD43CnL3sF


End file.
